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Restaurant Comings & Goings

Northern Light said:
While I love my fancy and exotic food ingredients, I absolutely make cost-effective, bulk, freezer meals just this way.

For homemade Bolognese (Tomato Meat Sauce)

Best price on Ground Beef is typically $8.80 per kg these days, at Metro, roughly every 2 months.

Best price on canned tomatoes is Unico at $1.25 roughly every 5 weeks at No Frills.

Best price on Tomato Paste is generally .69c per can

Fresh Garlic will run you about .80c per head

Onions (using a 2lb bag at $1.99) is roughly .80c worth too (2 medium or 3 small)

The rest is mostly spices, a hint of Balsamic Vinegar, and optionally, red wine)

1kg beef - $8.80
Onions + Garlic - $1.60
Canned Tomatoes - $2.50
Tomato Paste .70c (or splurge on Mutti Puree)
A dash of good Balsamic ($14 bottle) - .50c.
Spices - Dried Basil, Oregano, Savoury,Thyme, Salt, Chili Flakes - $1.50 all-in

Without Red Wine - Total - $15.60 - makes 6 generous portions - $2.60 per portion, plus pasta - 100 grams - .20c (No Frills, No Name, Reg. Price - $2 per pkg)

With Red Wine - 150ml - house grade red (nice, but not fancy) $12 bottle, $2.40 added, or .40c per portion.

Max, all-in $3.20 per portion.

* completely great to finish w/fresh basil if available, or chopped parsley, and a drizzle of really good olive oil if you have it. For extra indulgence, use fresh pasta, 2 nests Compliments pasta, - add .45c per serving.
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Easy to stretch the ground beef with breadcrumbs (or even stale bread) as well.

AoD
 
My business partner and I used to measure our restaurant meals in Susur Units (1 SU = $500). One advantage of not going out (and no longer having to pay for an office, transit, etc.) is that I can splurge on my home-cooked meals (and wines) instead!
 
Richard White said:
Agreed.

I would love to eat out more but it is getting silly. Swiss Chalet for example used to be a cheap meal for 3 at under $70.00 but now that same meal is just over $90.00.

I just got a pack of 12 meatballs for $10.99 at Food Basics and 2 bottles of pasta sauce for $8.00. Spaghetti noodles were $3.00 a package approximately. With tax that is almost $25.00 for three people to eat dinner one night.

Where can you go eat a spaghetti and meatball dinner for 3 people and pay less than $25.00 with tax now? It is cheaper to eat at home than it is to eat out.
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While that's all true, always eating at home is boring. You get cabin fever. What's the point in living in a dynamic city with tons of food options then?

Plus, cooking is time consuming and annoying after a long day.

Clearly there's still a huge market for eating out - Toronto has thousands of restaurants, which would no longer exist if there wasn't ongoing demand. Surely, there's an incentive for so many people to take the risk of opening a restaurant, which is a notoriously unstable industry, or people wouldn't bother doing it.
 
AlvinofDiaspar said:
Not only have the price gone up - the quality in general had gone way down.

You probably could have cut the cost down even more (50%) by making the meatballs and sauce yourself - with getting the ingredients for both (ground beef, canned tomatoes, pasta) while they are on sale.

AoD
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Food quality has gone down across the entire supply chain. And the service has gone down hill big time as well.

One of my biggest pet peeves is having slow service at a restaurant. I'm not blaming the servers either. i'm blaming the owners, who cut down on staff on the dining room floor to save a few bucks. Which results in long waits for drink orders and food orders. You got a few servers racing around the floor on a busy Friday and Saturday night, when they should have food runners bringing food to the tables and busers cleaning the dirty plates helping out the servers.

I was a server for over 10 years, i know restaurant traffic can be unpredictable, but on a weekend? You know its going to be busy. Hire more staff!
 
Further, people working from home likely order in through a food delivery app from time to time. While that is cheaper than going out, you pay for delivery and some price inflation. This spending likely reduces the amount people have for going out to restaurants
 
gabe said:
Food quality has gone down across the entire supply chain. And the service has gone down hill big time as well.

One of my biggest pet peeves is having slow service at a restaurant. I'm not blaming the servers either. i'm blaming the owners, who cut down on staff on the dining room floor to save a few bucks. Which results in long waits for drink orders and food orders. You got a few servers racing around the floor on a busy Friday and Saturday night, when they should have food runners bringing food to the tables and busers cleaning the dirty plates helping out the servers.

I was a server for over 10 years, i know restaurant traffic can be unpredictable, but on a weekend? You know its going to be busy. Hire more staff!
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I do have *some* sympathy for the owners - given the amount of debt some of them must have taken on during COVID, and the loans or whatever got to come from somewhere. What I do wish is more of a drive to simplify the menu to reduce cost.

PL1 said:
Further, people working from home likely order in through a food delivery app from time to time. While that is cheaper than going out, you pay for delivery and some price inflation. This spending likely reduces the amount people have for going out to restaurants
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Frankly, it's a pandemic necessity turning into parasitical behaviour.

AoD
 
PL1 said:
Further, people working from home likely order in through a food delivery app from time to time. While that is cheaper than going out, you pay for delivery and some price inflation. This spending likely reduces the amount people have for going out to restaurants
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I find ordering delivery through UberEats or equivalent more expensive than eating at a restaurant. Their additional fees are insane.
 
Mihairokov said:
I find ordering delivery through UberEats or equivalent more expensive than eating at a restaurant. Their additional fees are insane.
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Yup.

I stopped using them unless it's an absolute emergency and I have no choice.

You are basically added 20-30% to any meal if you use these food delivery apps.

I just call my favourite restaurants on my own and pick it up myself. It's cheaper and faster
 
Chicha SanChen tea / bubble tea... coming (very) soon to U of T's Medical Sciences Building, 1 King's College Circle. Replacing Tim Hortons, which shuttered at the end of 2023.
 
gabe said:
Food quality has gone down across the entire supply chain.
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I notice this with french fries. Even higher end chains like Earls and Moxies switched over to frozen McCain fries and they aren't going back.
The whole concept of making them in house is gone outside of the highest end and most expensive restaurants.
I suppose labour costs are a factor in that paying people to peel potatoes for an hour is simply not worth it anymore as you can't make money on fries outside of sweet potato fires, which are the same frozen bagged ones delivered in a truck but they pretend they are worth paying $4 more for as a substitute.
 
The best and most consistent fries in the city (IMO) were at The John on Bloor around Dufferin (R.I.P.). They closed without warning in August and there is zero info/no phone number/no updates to social media. Anyone have intel on what the heck happened here?
 

Name: Golden Horseshoe Barbecue
Contact: 657 Dupont St., goldenhorseshoebbq.com, @goldenhorseshoebbq
Neighbourhood: Seaton Village
Previously: Popeyes
Owners: Andrew Golden and Kris Hansen
Pitmaster: Andrew Golden
Executive chef: Kris Hansen
Accessibility: Accessible washroom on the main floor


Andrew Golden, the 24-year-old pitmaster and co-owner of Golden Horseshoe Barbecue, is having a surreal moment. He went from selling barbecue at breweries around the city to opening a brick-and-mortar operation in less than two years.
 

For many Torontonians, taking transit or an Uber to Ossington or Leslieville for dinner and drinks is second nature. But what if we told you that good food isn’t exclusive to Toronto? Since the launch of the region’s Michelin Guide in 2022, a growing number of restaurants outside of the city have been receiving well-deserved recognition rivalling that of downtown hotspots. Here, 10 Michelin-approved kitchens in Ontario worth the road trip.
 
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